Upcoming School Textbooks

Well, they put up my textbook list for the coming semester, and their prices. $800.20!!! That's a month's rent for a two-bedroom apartment. Most expensive semester yet. Last year, the first semester was like, $600, and my second was under $500. I guess the more advanced a program is, the more expensive the textbooks will be...

A friend of the family gave us these flowers to grow in the garden earlier this year. They're called Impatients and they're little white flowers. When we transplanted them, all their petals fell off, but they quickly bloomed again and stayed like that. Real healthy looking for a long while. Then, all of a sudden, all the petals and all the leaves fell off for no known reason. We told our friend, and she said that her and everyone she knows who have been growing Impatients this year lost them all at around the same time. That's so weird!!!! Is there some kind of airborn disease that effects only this brand of flower?

We finally have a good-sized zucchini, although it's still got some more growing to do. Despite looking healthy, and despite many flowers, most of the flowers have just fallen off, leaving nothing beneath. I'd seen that some recipes called for zucchini flowers, so I thought maybe harvesting the petals might be worthwhile, but by the time I'd communicated this, all of the flowers that had fallen had already been eaten by something else. So I guess they might have been edible, although I'm not sure if you're supposed to pick them up after they've fallen off, or if you're supposed to pull them off the zucchini. On the zucchini that's grown in, it looks like the flower stayed attached but just withered up.

I figured that whatever ate the fallen zucchini petals grew an appetite for flowers and moved to the Impatients.

Cherry tomatoes pulled through surprisingly well late in the season. We will actually have a decent crop of those. Some of them are already almost ready

And my sunflower's finally opening! Really, the only plant that belongs to me is the sunflower, so it's the only one that's well-being I should be concerned with. My neighbour finally produced a flower that's almost as large as mine. But get this, it's growing three heads!!! I didn't know that was possible.

All the neighbours with really successful gardens don't seem to understand why our half-failed little garden divided between three households is something that we're all so proud of. They don't understand that this is pretty much all of our first attempt at anything like this, and that this year was mostly data collection anyway. A half-success this year may be a full success next!

Oh, by the way, after I told you guys to order from well.ca, I got called in. So I don't know if that was you guys or not, but if it was, thanks.